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As much as I love cars and car technology, I'm also annoyed by all the things they should do, but don't. Here's my list of soap dish-level automotive annoyances, so named in honor of Andy Rooney, who once built a 60 Minutes segment around the hassles of how soap bars turn scummy in the shower. The list is by no means exhaustive. So feel free to add your own in the talkback forum.

Ten speakers, none in the driver headrest. Premium audio systems have something like two to three speakers for every passenger in the car. The sound is awesome. But when you've got a high-tech car, the audible-driver-prompts from the nav system ("left turn ahead") or the handsfree Bluetooth cellphone conversation gets piped to all 10, 12, or 14 speakers. That's overkill. German seatmaker Recaro solved the problem decades ago with its Recarophonie, a sport seat with speakers in the headrests. (Pontiac Fiero had them for a while.) It's time for their return. Some premium sound systems can direct any audio source to just one or two speakers while the main music plays on elsewhere, and some do for driver prompts, which is a good start.

Ten speakers, but none in the passenger headrest. If you've got kids in back watching Madagascar with headphones, when you crank up "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio, the little ingrates say, "Turn that awful music down." So it's time for Son of Recarophonie in both front seat headrests playing the front seat audio source, but with a driver-side side cutout for nav instructions, and a driver/passenger switch for whoever wants to use the handsfree cellphone. The speakers could also be mounted in the roof and fire down at the front seat occupants (MIT Media Lab and DaimlerChrysler did some interesting research on this). With sound shaping, two headrest speakers per person provide excellent surround sound.

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Control knobs, no handrest. Nav systems often have a control knob or button. (BMW iDrive is the most famous and infamous.) But with most, there's no place to rest the palm of your hand and it's fatiguing to enter instructions, especially when driving. If you're going to build a control knob, make it easy to brace the hand. iDrive does that part well, also Audi A8/A6, Infiniti M45, and the coming Mercedes S-Class.

Tiny cupholders for tin cans. The American spirit includes the freedom to buy 64-ounce beverages at 7Eleven and then drive long distances in vehicles getting 15 mpg. The world's automakers outside the U.S. are slow catching on that not all in-car beverages are 12-ounce Coke cans. Is it too much to ask that cupholders are sized to hold drinks up to 32 ounces (64 for pickups) and that the cups won't fall out under spirited cornering?

Bill Howard is the editor of TechnoRide.com, the car site for tech fans, and writes a column on car technology for PC Magazine each issue. He is also a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
Bill's articles on PCs, notebooks, and printers have been cited five times in the annual Computer Press Association Awards. He was named as one of the industry's ten most influential journalists from 1997 to 2000 by Marketing Computers and is a frequent commentator on TV news and business shows as well...
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